And the Rest of It

Wow, people totally have a handle on this coronavirus:

A new poll suggests the premiers of Canada’s three Prairie provinces are lagging counterparts from the rest of the country when it comes to how local residents feel they are managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The poll from Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies found 30 per cent of respondents in Alberta were satisfied with the job Premier Jason Kenney was doing when it comes to COVID-19 – the lowest level of satisfaction for Canada’s 10 provincial leaders.

Kenney has faced criticism in recent weeks for resisting calls to impose lockdowns even as Alberta contended with a surge of new infections, which at one point saw it have more active cases than Ontario.

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, whose province has also been battered by new infections during the second wave of COVID-19, fared slightly better than Kenney with 31 per cent of provincial respondents approving of his management of the pandemic.

Pallister’s government faced heavy criticism after testing capacity and contact tracing initially failed to keep up with demand as case numbers spiked. For much of the fall, Manitoba led all other provinces in new infections per capita.

The only other premier with less than 50 per cent satisfaction was Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe at 39 per cent. Moe’s government has also been criticized for not responding sooner to a steady increase in infections in the province.

Meanwhile, just over half of respondents from Ontario approved of the job that Premier Doug Ford was doing.

In neighbouring Quebec, 55 per cent of respondents in that province felt the same about Francois Legault.

 

Ontario and Quebec have the highest infection rates and their lockdowns have destroyed thousands of businesses.

But don't let facts get in the way.

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Self-proclaimed Harvard epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding waged an anti-science disinformation campaign—disguised as medical advice—against American scientists working on the COVID-19 vaccine to advance his own career.

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Scientists in the U.K. have recruited their first participants as part of a study of a new long-acting antibody treatment that they say could be an alternative to the COVID-19 vaccine.

If successful, the antibody-treatment could prevent anyone who has been exposed to COVID-19 from developing the infection as it could ‘neutralize the virus’, according to Dr. Catherine Houlihan, a University College London Hospital virologist.

 

 

All of this sounds so strange:

A parked motor home exploded on a tree-lined street in downtown Nashville at dawn on Friday morning minutes after a recorded announcement emanating from the vehicle warned of a bomb, in what police said was an “intentional act” that injured at least three people.

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This attack doesn’t look like a symbolic attack. It appears that the RV was parked where it wanted to be — the middle of 2nd Ave in Nashville in front of an AT&T network switch/data center and across from some not-particularly-notable bars and restaurants. 

Interesting:

After seven months of studying relics and historical texts, Israeli archaeologists and masons unveiled their recreation of the sacred flooring that Jesus’ feet once touched.

They replicated tiles from Jerusalem’s Second Temple, where the New Testament says Jesus went for pilgrimage and study as a boy and, as an older preacher, cast out its money-changers in anger.